I have worked on many campaigns in my life, and I can tell you that one of the most stressful things you can do is file your financial reports to the state. Stressful, not so much because you have done anything dishonest, but stressful because a good campaigner wants to be honest with the citizens about how a particular campaign is being run. Indeed, if you do screw up, there is an amendment process when you notice that you forgot to add that last minute donation or forgot to carry the one. This amendment process is a good thing.
But it can also be abused…
You see, less honest campaigns can “forget” to file donations long after the financial reports are due – and long after the media has written its usual “this is how much money and where it came from” story it should do when financials are due – so long as they file an amendment. This can be at its worst when the campaign is over and a candidate finally remembers to report that they got $10,000 from a questionable lobby. Though this action is perfectly legal, they are not following the spirit of law.
This is where Representative Sheryl Allen’s (R – Bountiful, District 19) HB 56 comes in. The bill still allows for revisions if an honest mistake is made, but the amendment process is much more time consuming and requires an explanation for why the omission took place.
Now, this is the first of many ethics bills that I will be reporting on, and I am sure that this one will not be popular on the hill. I can’t wait to hear the arguments because I can tell you know that they will be about how it is important to keep the amendment process and that this impedes that. I would say that if they make every effort to be honest, they have nothing to worry about – the people that will object to this do so because they don’t want the public to see where their money is coming from.
